


I dreamed of an undefiled crown in shadows

by Alkarinque



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Fëanorian Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 06:15:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14037975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alkarinque/pseuds/Alkarinque
Summary: Maglor, through his early life in Valinor to the shores of Middle-Earth, and kingship.





	I dreamed of an undefiled crown in shadows

**Author's Note:**

> This work is written for Feanorian Week (as the tags say) on Maglor's day, with the prompt kingship, though I managed to get some early childhood in as well. I wanted to write about Elros and Elrond, because I am so fascinated by their story, but this is what came out in the end. 
> 
> Maglor turned out to be a bit more power-hungry (if you can call it that) than I am used to seeing him, but it was nice as a writer to try something new.
> 
> I am not a native speaker, so sorry for possible mistakes. I literally edited this just before I went to bed.

One of his first memories was of his grandfather in his palace. White light had spilled against the walls of the grand throne room, giving everything a revered feeling like standing before a mighty temple. In the centre was Finwë, tall and dark and kind but kingly and clad in white and gold. His eyes – so alike his father’s, but turned skywards instead of downward into the burning embers of the forge – shone and rested steadily on the elf who spoke with him before his throne. Beside him, proud and strong as always, stood Fëanáro clad in red and blue with his eyes turned the same way as his father, but they seemed nearly threatening. No one took notice though, for all attention was on Finwë. Makalaurë remembered how the golden crown had gleamed in the dark hair.

Makalaurë remembered thinking: That is what a king looks like.

He continued thinking that way, even when he had seen Olwë in his pearls and smiles and Ingwë with his golden hair and might.

He never admitted it, but he could never imagine his father being king. His father was an inventor; a scholar; a prince; a smith. He was power and a rush of inspiration. When he had taken their growing family – first Tyelko, then Moryo, then Curvo, but when the twins came he didn’t take them out anymore – on journeys it had been Fëanáro who took him and Maitimo to the highest peak of a mountain, or to the utmost tip of land in the north, tasting the biting cold wind and icy water. Fëanáro lead them and taught them flower’s names and the movements of the earth, but he had none of Finwë’s still and patient wisdom. He had passion. Finwë was constant, Fëanáro was flickering.

 

“You are quite similar to your father”, Indiliel told him one day when they were sitting in her father’s garden and he was working on an especially trying piece.

“What?” he said, taken by surprise by the statement. He had always been told he was most alike to his mother except in looks.

“You are both so passionate”, she answered looking at him with those blue eyes that made him blushing and shy. “Artists.”

“So is my mother”, he protested.

Indiliel smiled and Makalaurë thought distantly of making a love song about a field of lilies.

“Your mother creates art as if she wants to figure it out. You and your father creates art to master it”, she said while putting a tress of pale blonde hair behind her ear.

“Perhaps”, he said with his eyes stuck on the place her fingers had touched. She smiled and he smiled back, hiding how it hurt a little. His mother never tried to master. She understood instead and it gave her a powerful – though it was not distinguishable – advantage. An advantage she used with wisdom. Finwë never tried to master. He ruled. A king rules and serves and demands, but he never masters people. Makalaurë had heard his grandfather tell his father so, long ago. But he would never be king, he reminded himself when he leaned closer to Indiliel, eyes now blushingly on her lips. He had no need of chastity.

 

“Makalaurë!”

He woke instantly, startled. For a moment he was confused about where he was, before recognising the soft sheets of his and Indiliel’s bed. He looked around and found her nowhere and felt unusually cold. Then he remembered. She had gone to friends. They lived just around the corner-

“Makalaurë!”

It was Maitimo.

“Yes?” he shouted back, so the other could hear him from downstairs.

He rose from the bed and quickly reached for some clothes other than his nightshirt as the pounding steps on the stairs of his tall brother closed in. Makalaurë felt oddly unattached. Unfeeling. The day felt grey, and it had barely begun. Even the light of Laurelin seemed dreary.

The last months had been that way; as if everything was sucked out of the days to fill whatever lay in the future.

“Brother”, Maitimo said as he entered, slightly out of breath and with the knotting on the shirt a little loose. “Something have happened.”

“What?” Makalaurë asked, worry rising in his belly like too cool ice on skin.

Few things made his brother seek him out in the late morning. He was often at court, handling the tension and wearing a prince’s crown. Having meetings.

“It is Father. He- he threatened Nolofinwë. Not - “, he held up a finger when Makalaurë opened his mouth to tell him how common that was, “the usual way. He took a sword with him. He pointed a sword at him, brother! He held the tip against his throat!”

The world stilled.

“He could have killed him”, Maitimo said, eyes dark and chaotic.

Then it came rushing against him, all too fast.

 

“Nolofinwë threatened him!”

“Then how come he did not have a sword? What threat could it have been compared to this?”

“You”, Curufinwë hissed to Maitimo, “do not see the enemy.”

Maitimo’s face darkened and seemed to rise to a greater height before his younger brother. He opened his mouth to retaliate but Makalaurë had already shut the door to the parlour so he did not hear it except as wordless shouting. Above him he could distantly hear his mother’s shout to deaf ears. His father had not said a word since returning, nor had his face changed expression, only resolutely standing by his actions.

_Are we going mad?_ Makalaurë wondered and looked out the window where everything seemed just the same as the day before.

 

“It is … not so bad”, Indiliel said and looked at the grey plains of northern Valinor surrounding the place where Fëanáro planned to build a fortress.

Makalaurë loved her for trying. He himself hated the hills and the loneliness. Everything was far away.

“Father has already started talking about creating mines”, he told her, to distract himself from the chilling wind.

Indiliel raised an eyebrow. “For gold? Or iron?”

“Iron.”

“So for weapons then”, she concluded but did not seem bothered by it.

“We need protection”, he also concluded but they did not say a word about what it meant.

_Protection against who? Melkor? Nolofinwë? Manwë?_ his mother had asked Fëanáro before they departed north.

 

The question still rang in his head years later, when his family – with the exception of Nerdanel, but she had not been counted into Fëanáro’s family for a long time – saddled their horses for Taniquetil. Maitimo smiled at him from his horse’s back and Makalaurë smiled back and helped Indiliel up.

He looked up at the sky while his wife reached for the reins and correcting her seat. It was clear and fresh in the light of Laurelin and seemed to bear no ill news in the future. He frowned. He knew better than to believe that.

Finwë, without his official title of king but with the familiar reliability, bid them goodbye on the steps of Formenos. Makalaurë wondered absently if his uncle now had his grandfather’s old crown.

 

Finwë couldn’t _die_. His grandfather- he- kings didn’t _die_. They were the cliff under your feet, the bravery in fear, the reason in the storm, the reality in dreams.

They didn’t _die_.

(He had no idea. They all died.)

 

When they had left the shore of Valinor behind, when his father had turned to ash, when his oath started feeling heavier than he first would have thought, when Indiliel stopped looking at him and instead turned to the land, when his brothers started fighting each other like starved hounds, when Maitimo was _gone_ and _captured_ and _gone_ Maglor – no longer Makalaurë - realised with clarity that he had finally got what he secretly had wanted most of his life.

A crown. He was king.


End file.
